Carlos Ichter never observed Lent or Holy Week in the Baptist congregation where he grew up, but Tallowood Baptist Church - where Ichter serves as a worship minister - has commemorated the Last Supper and the crucifixion in the days leading up to Easter for more than a decade.

"I've been asked a few times, 'What is this Maundy Thursday?' It is a foreign idea for some, but once you explain it to them, they see it's scriptural and it makes sense," he said. "There are a lot of good things that Roman Catholics do that I think everybody should be open to. ... It's not a Catholic thing or a Baptist thing, it's a biblical thing."

Tallowood makes the tradition its own, this year inviting participants to sit down at tables to break bread and drink grape juice in an intimate setting, where they discussed the message Jesus gave on the eve of his crucifixion.

'Exodus' of Catholics

Other local congregations like River Oaks Baptist, Clear Lake Baptist and Houston's First Baptist also hold special programs and offer Holy Communion to observe the holiday.

"There's a renewed interest in the liturgical calendar. They may not call it 'Ash Wednesday' or 'Maundy Thursday,' but it's reformatted in a new way," said Dave Travis, the director of the Dallas-based Leadership Network, a megachurch consulting group. "So much of their constituency is former Catholics, so it has become very natural to identify with."

Indeed, one in 10 Americans is a former member of the Catholic Church, and about half of those ex-Catholics find themselves in the pews of Protestant churches, with evangelicals taking the lion's share, according to research by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

But the "exodus" from Catholicism, as discussed recently in the National Catholic Reporter, may be a smaller movement locally than it is nationwide. The Catholic Church continues to show annual growth, and the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston will baptize nearly 2,500 new members this Easter, more than any diocese in the country.

The recognition of the church calendar by evangelicals has been happening for decades but is re-emerging as a trend.

"Eventually, all these churches go back to a common source," said the Rev. Ron Robers on, associate director of ecumenical and interreligious affairs for the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops. "Principally, we don't see it as a problem. ... It can be a good thing for us to share common liturgical services as long as they are not designed to take Catholics away from the church."

Autonomous churches

For churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, individual congregations can choose how they would like to observe Lent (if at all), Holy Week and Easter.

"Because of the autonomy of our churches, there is such a variety," said Mike Harland, director of worship for Lifeway Christian Resources.

Lou Ann, a pastoral assistant at First Baptist Church of Friendswood, said she's familiar with the church calendar, having grown up in the Methodist Church, and that Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services help "re-emphasize" Baptist teachings on Jesus' death and resurrection.

Second Baptist Church, the country's largest Baptist congregation, includes large numbers of former Catholics and former mainline Protestants, which senior associate pastor Gary Moore says makes the church more open to new expressions of Easter and Holy Week, whether it be its Resurrection dance YouTube video or the Stations of the Cross it debuted this year.

The church invited congregants to prayerfully walk through the events of Jesus' betrayal and death, symbolized by replicas of artifacts from Jesus' crucifixion, like the crown of thorns and the nails that held him to the cross. The eight-station display is their church's take on the well-known Catholic tradition.

"The first two people who walked through said, 'This really appeals to me because I grew up with the Stations of the Cross in the Catholic Church,' " said Moore, "and while it's not the same tradition, it still displays the suffering of Christ."

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